Rachel Herz
Appearances
Throughline
History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And eventually, they're stopped, landing on this patch of mucous membrane, which is basically at the level of our eyebrows. And on this patch of mucous membrane, this is where all the receptors that are capable for detecting You know, smells exist.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
The same part of the brain that's giving us the experience of emotion is also giving us the experience of scent. And so instantly that we are consciously registering a scent, we are also to some degree experiencing an emotion. I mean, to smell is to feel is what you just said. It's the exact same system. It's exactly that. It's perfectly said. To smell is to feel. I love that.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
At this point in time, the most supported way to, you know, engage or reactivate your sense of smell after smell loss, and especially if it's from illness like COVID, is with smell training.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
All you need are four distinctive scents. So for instance, maybe peanut butter, shampoo, maybe suntan lotion, and coffee. That's just for random example.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Several times a day, so at least three times a day, sit down, unscrew the jar, sniff at what is in the jar. And even if you can't smell anything, think about, okay, lemon. I know this lemon, lemon, maybe I'm even salivating just thinking about it. I put lemon on fish or whatever.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So you have a little thought connection as well as the scent itself, you know, thinking about what it is, even if you can't smell anything.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And then you try to do it at least two more times a day and try to keep on going at it for at least 12 weeks.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So our sense of smell is constantly regenerating, which is one of the great things about unhealthy sense of smell. And what we're hoping to do with smell loss is like start up that process again. And if there hasn't been any damage to the pathway between the nose to the brain, then this is something that you can help do by just actively sniffing.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So like sort of turning on the genes that will then turn on the receptors to re-engage and regrow.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
I think everybody should be doing this, regardless of the sensibility of your sense of smell, at least once a day, every day. And this is because our sense of smell is directly involved with the health of our brain and our body.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Part 2. To smell is to judge. i was in the back seat of the car on a beautiful summer day and the windows were rolled down we're going through pastoral landscape and all of a sudden from the front seat my mom says oh i love that smell she says it it's got to be good it's this
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
beautiful day i'm all really happy so i make this connection between positivity and scent and i disclosed this on the playground when i was about seven years old i made this comment that oh i love that smell i actually still didn't know what it was called at this point And then everyone turned to me and yelled, ooh, that skunk, you're so weird.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And I was met with derision and screeches and children pointing fingers at me and running away.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So the culture around me tells me that skunk is a bad smell. So I would say I have learned that. And yet I have this personal experience, which is really positive, And that's actually going to supersede the cultural aspect of it. So it's a multi-layer system between sensitivity, cultural learning, and personal experience. And it's the meaning which determines how much you like it.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So for instance, the immigrants who moved in next door, you know, using the smell of both food and then the smell of the person who eats that food as being other and bad and not part of my tribe and someone or a group that should be pushed away from who I am. So it's not pure. The scent is very much tied up in the culture.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
It's very much tied up in the particular moment in that instance in time, let's say politically, where whatever is going on, that that scent then takes that meaning and where it's coming from.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Scent memories are bringing back a very discreet episode that's, you know, fully fleshed out as one moment in time. That's a very special kind of specific time travel that scent enables us to experience. And in a way that other sensory experiences don't because we feel much more back in that original time and place. It's so much more visceral.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Like we've actually kind of moved from now to back then.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Who we are is a collection of the stories of our past and our life narrative is how we define ourselves and our life narrative is dependent upon remembering who we are and the things that have happened to us. And absolutely, scent is the key to that.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
My name is Rachel Herz. I'm a neuroscientist, and I've been studying the psychological science of smell for over 30 years.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
The fabric of our existence, literally the threads that weave together how we feel within the world, both with other people, with our past experiences, and fundamentally with ourselves, is deeply, deeply connected to our sense of smell. And when that becomes broken, those relationships, those outer relationships and our inner relationships with ourself start to really stumble and fumble and fall.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
We really do not still fully have a grasp or grip on how it is that we perceive smells. So it really still is this enigma.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
And so a lot of people who were working in the molecular biology and biochemistry and other systems went to study smell. And this led to basically an explosion of research looking at the molecular basis of how the sense of smell works.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
What smells are is that they're chemicals that float through the air.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Air is like a blank canvas, and the scents that we can perceive are like the paints on it that are the world that we exist in.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
So our ability to detect smells is actually far greater than our ability to detect any other sensory experience.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
We're breathing. We're inhaling through our nostrils, taking a deep inhalation in every breath. A couple of seconds.
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History of the Self: Smell and Memory
Air that we can't smell coming into our nostrils and traveling up our nostrils. Right into our nasal passages, which are actually quite complex. There are sort of, there are these, all these little curvy structures and kind of curves and bends inside the nose, which are actually there to create as much turbulence to bring up the air carrying these odor molecules.